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Location: Great Britain
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Originally Posted by RaleighSentinel
After some more thought, the West Midlands (e.g. Birmingham) and Greater Manchester metropolitan counties in England may also be decent analogues to add to the German example. Manchester wasn’t in the wiki page with the modal transportation data for cities (props to ilovelondon for that link), but I went to the source data, and it had a 71% auto score IIRC. Both area sustained heavy damage during the Blitz. I’ve been to both, but spent most of my time in the urban core while on business, using taxis for local transport and trains between.
In terms of bombing during WW2, the midlands armamernt factories were hit far harder than the North West and Manchester.
Manchester is the second least car dependent place in the UK after London and has a good public transport system.
gIn the UK most cities have light rail, metro or commuter rail systems.
In terms of smaller cities Nottingham, Sheffield, Tyne and Wear (Newcastle), Blackpool and Edinburgh all have Tram/LRT systems, as do larger cities in relation to Manchester, Birmingham (West Midlands) and London (DLR/ South London Tramlink). Glasgow has a Subway, whilst the system in Newcastle also passes under the city and is basically an Underground.
Whilst most cities have comprehensive heavy rail links via commuter rail services, some such as Merseyrail are a heavy rail metro system and go underground, whilst heavy rail services such as London Overground, Thameslink and Crossrail are all set to improve London's transport infrastructure.
Regardless of your anecdotal evidence, European statistics clearly show that even if it's not to North American levels, Europe is extremely car-centric and truck-centric.
I think one thing to consider in relation to "car-cities" like Los Angeles as the OP puts it is that passenger transport as defined by the eurostat link consists of cars, mass transit by road vehicles, and rail transit, but that split isn't by itself what makes Los Angeles a car city. There are other modes that are not the passenger transport those graphs cover such as walking and biking. Those modes can effectively cover a lot of day to day usage, but also won't cover nearly as much ground compared to a car commute situation so they'd end up barely registering on that graph since it uses passenger-kilometers though a sizable proportion of walking and biking for a commute generally points to a less car-centric city.
Something similar happens with some mass transit such as with some buses as they generally cover a shorter distance than a commute by private automobile as only select buses will by going on expressways and highways and covering a large number of miles per trip. It's not too crazy to think that a person riding buses for their commute is usually more likely on average to be living in a fairly urban city and closer to work, but a person riding a car is more likely living in a less urban area and doing a longer by distance commute. This won't always be the case and there will be exceptions. Essentially, if you're using a car for a commute, then you're likely racking up quite a bit of passenger miles. If you're doing a bus or potentially inner city rail transit, you're likely not going to be covering so many miles a day. You also are likely to cover an even more limited number of miles per day if your daily commute is via walking or biking.
In light of that, it may make sense to also consider the mode taken per trip, or since that's really difficult data to come by, the imperfect proxy of modal share for commutes which has a marked difference between most European cities/metros and most American cities. Compiling that data seems to already be a pretty difficult task as the most car-centric European city by a large margin in the second table for smaller cities is Turin (Torino), but yet that table is citing 2004 stats which are substantially different from these 2011 stats, and since 2011, Turin has launched a S-Bahn like rail system with a through-running tunnel through the center of the city.
This has been covered somewhat in the back and forth earlier, but it makes sense to try to bring it into the context of what the OP asked. One last tidbit--as of the time of this post, the stats from the modal share wikipedia link has Rome as the most car-centric European city as noted by ilovelondon. However, that stat cites 2014 and since then, Rome has extended one of its subway lines and has created another one and rapid transit has a tendency of making the most significant dent when it comes to people opting to use mass transit (since it's pretty rapid). Los Angeles is right now in the midst of doing a major extension to one of its rapid transit lines as well as several other mass transit improvements, so it seems possible that Los Angeles in a decade or so from now will actually be a bad example of a car-city relative to most other major US cities.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 02-18-2019 at 12:36 AM..
I don't know if it's just a Asian style density of nearby cities/villages/towns. But Northern Milan from Como down to the city itself seems extraordinarily sprawly for Europe.
Especially when you factor in how North-centric it is it seems like density easily falls within metro Milan when south of Milan itself it could easily maintain a high density. Anyone know why Milan is so one sided and sprawly to the north, although it is pretty dense it would likely be much denser right next to Milan rather than miles to the north.
Milan compares very well with Atlanta sprawl wise, and it's crazy focus sprawling Northward. http://mapfrappe.com/
I don't know if it's just a Asian style density of nearby cities/villages/towns. But Northern Milan from Como down to the city itself seems extraordinarily sprawly for Europe.
Especially when you factor in how North-centric it is it seems like density easily falls within metro Milan when south of Milan itself it could easily maintain a high density. Anyone know why Milan is so one sided and sprawly to the north, although it is pretty dense it would likely be much denser right next to Milan rather than miles to the north.
Milan compares very well with Atlanta sprawl wise, and it's crazy focus sprawling Northward. MAPfrappe - Legacy Page
Some of Europe is extremely protective of its agricultral lands and north of Milan is where the agricultural waters flow from. If your point of reference is the US, then think of the urban growth boundary that Portland has. Google maps necessarily goes by the centered coordinate relative to your resolution and aspect ratio, but it’s likely that you’re also seeing a good deal of intensively cultivated land in your window. My wish is that the US does the same throughout and limits greenfield decelopment eating into nature or farmland, but instead develops surface lots and brownfield sites.
I don't know if it's just a Asian style density of nearby cities/villages/towns. But Northern Milan from Como down to the city itself seems extraordinarily sprawly for Europe.
Especially when you factor in how North-centric it is it seems like density easily falls within metro Milan when south of Milan itself it could easily maintain a high density. Anyone know why Milan is so one sided and sprawly to the north, although it is pretty dense it would likely be much denser right next to Milan rather than miles to the north.
Milan compares very well with Atlanta sprawl wise, and it's crazy focus sprawling Northward. MAPfrappe - Legacy Page
Just south of Milan is the Po River Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in all of Italy and Europe. During Industrialization, Milan developed more North/Northeastward away from the Po and its tributaries, likely due to that land being less arable than the area to the south. Today, there are two large “parks” to the south and west of the city proper, which do serve to hem in development in that direction, protecting valuable agricultural lands. Many of the larger farms and communities have begun to supplement their farming income with agrotourism. The area is still under some pressure from additional urbanization, especially along important transit routes, and as you know, politics is quite the sport in Italy. Neighboring provinces in Lombardy still have quite the rivalry, and look to protect their local interests.
The Atlanta analogy was an interesting one. Both have similar metro area populations. I grew up in one, and spent a fair amount of time in another... A trip from downtown to Alpharetta is about the distance from Central Milan to the city of Como. Atlanta’s red clay soil isn’t nearly as productive as just south of Milan, and the North Georgia mountains not nearly as steep, allowing for a bit more sprawl in all directions, until you start to get out towards Macon or Augusta or Chattanooga. The densities may start to line up in certain areas like north of both major city cores, on average, but it does still seem different—in Italy it was a bit more bi-modal, with population still concentrated in the smaller municipalities, which were surrounded by more green space, where in the north Atlanta area, it seemed more suburban in its disbursement, with somewhat fewer municipal concentrations, and the green space surrounding individual residences.
Perhaps LA is not the example of a car dependent city. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...nsit_ridership
While it ranks lower than many, it is ahead of "politically correct" Madison WI and the home of "Streetcar named Desire" New Orleans.
Perhaps LA is not the example of a car dependent city. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...nsit_ridership
While it ranks lower than many, it is ahead of "politically correct" Madison WI and the home of "Streetcar named Desire" New Orleans.
Virtually every city in the US is a car city except for a tiny handful. One thing to note though is that how car dependent a city compared to another doesn’t have transit usage as a perfect proxy because there are places where walking and biking have significant modal shares. Madison does do better than LA in those regards, though it doesn’t change that for all three, private automobile still takes up a strong outright majority.
There are several articles on this from different periods within the last few years, and even though Los Angeles is obviously strongly car centric right now, it actually lands itself in terms of overall rankings pretty high up though the modal split away from cars drops precipitously and almost following a power law distribution which oddly doesn't necessarily correlate that strongly with the size of the city.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 02-24-2019 at 02:39 PM..
Virtually every city in the US is a car city except for a tiny handful. One thing to note though is that how car dependent a city compared to another doesn’t have transit usage as a perfect proxy because there are places where walking and biking have significant modal shares. Madison does do better than LA in those regards, though it doesn’t change that for all three, private automobile still takes up a strong outright majority.
There are several articles on this from different periods within the last few years, and even though Los Angeles is obviously strongly car centric right now, it actually lands itself in terms of overall rankings pretty high up though the modal split away from cars drops precipitously and almost following a power law distribution which oddly doesn't necessarily correlate that strongly with the size of the city.
Even much of New York is a car city. Most of Queens, Southern Brooklyn, the East Bronx, and Staten Island were built for cars. Even the bombed out parts of the South/West Bronx and Brooklyn were rebuilt with cars in mind (at first, now that is not the case).
Even much of New York is a car city. Most of Queens, Southern Brooklyn, the East Bronx, and Staten Island were built for cars. Even the bombed out parts of the South/West Bronx and Brooklyn were rebuilt with cars in mind (at first, now that is not the case).
The Tri-State Area has something like half of its commuting by driving alone. The city has a much smaller proportion and mostly where you’ve mentioned but I wouldn’t say most of Queens is like that or Southern Brooklyn were built for cars as much of it was built for streetcars, rapid transit or commuter rail including for lines that no longer run. East Bronx also has plenty of neighborhoods that are dense and urban and were built out to their current form essentially due to rapid transit extensions. Staten Island is where what you say holds true nearly throughout save for the small individual village like downtowns near major ferries or well-connected to such.
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